The Most Embarrassing Moments Of The Oscars 2019

There was plenty of opportunity for awkwardness at the 91st Academy Awards - in addition to the usual drawn out speeches and bad jokes, there was the elephant in the room of the fact there was no host to smooth things over.

Luckily, other presenters and award-winners took up the mantle of providing awkward moments for the watching world to digest in horror. Whether it was a winner who couldn't part with their iPhone or a speech presented like a shopping list, the awards for biggest cringers go to...

The evening opened with a Reading Festival mosh pit

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When the Academy Awards couldn't land a host, 1980s rock band Queen stepped up to open the ceremony with their hits. While it might sound exciting to see all of Hollywood clapping and grooving to We Will Rock You, instead it offered a gruesome insight into the afterparty dance-floor as the camera showed Christian Bale and Amy Adams looking on in horror and Javier Bardem losing his mind like a teenager watching Rage Against the Machine play a secret set at the Pyramid Stage. And thus, the entire A-list of Hollywood lost its aura of cool inside two minutes.

The Free Solo directors had a tense moment post-speech

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The good news was that Free Solo - the documentary about Alex Honnold's vertigo-inducing scale of mountain El Capitan - took home the big prize in its category. The bad news was that co-directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi - and IRL couple - seemed to have a somewhat tense 'couple moment' just after their speech.

It looked like Vasarhelyi was saying "I'm so sorry" to Chin after she forgot to namecheck their second child on stage, to which he said "It's fine". As you'll know if you've ever been in a relationship, it's probably not fine.

The Vice make-up and hairstyling team read out a shopping list

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Who to thank during an acceptance speech is a conundrum that has claimed many victims in Oscar history. If you've done your research you'll know that keeping things short and sweet generally yields the best results. If you haven't, you might use your moment in the spotlight to pull out an A4 shopping list of every person who was vaguely near the film. This was sadly what the make-up and hairstyling team for Vice did during their acceptance speech, slowed down even further as they took it in turns to read a name out each but hadn't agreed on any clear running order. Car crash.

Spike Lee was not having any of Awkwafina's banter

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Comedian John Mulaney and actress Awkwafina had more than their fair share of cringers, even allowing for the fact they presented two consecutive awards. It started badly when Awkwafina made a joke about seeing Spike Lee and waved to him. The camera cut to Lee whose face was frozen in a perfect cocktail of confusion and disdain.

The pair then made a joke about how they were presenting "one of the big ones" when announcing Best Animated Short, arguably one of the lesser-known awards. A clumsy gag, and considering Awkwafina was swigging tequila out her bag on the red carpet before the show, a moment that may go down as one of the most powerful anti-drinking commercials of the year.

One man live-streamed his award win

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The need to capture and share one of the biggest moments of his life overcame all common sense for one of the team of the Oscar-winning short film. In their journey to the stage to collect their award, one member of the team behind Skin was seen waving his iPhone around wildly, either recording the moment (you're already on TV mate) or on FaceTime to someone who wasn't invited. Luckily, the team went on to make a great speech about educating children about prejudice. Still, it's a moment that will haunt us all forever.

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